The cases, which could be several inches thick, according to Janet Clarkson, author of Pie: A History, were perhaps not even intended to be edible. Even once fat had begun to be added to the dough, bringing us into the realm of modern pastry, a pie crust was still sometimes considered more as a kind of primitive Tupperware.
A well-baked meat pie, with liquid fat poured into any steam holes left open and left to solidify, might even be kept for up to a year, with the crust apparently keeping out air and spoilage. It seems difficult to fathom today, but as Clarkson reflects, "it was such a common practice that we have to assume that most of the time consumers survived the experience".
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Pies
I need to keep an eye out for Pie: A History. From BBC:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I feel obliged to like both types of minced pie, meat or fruit, in solidarity with my Puritan ancestors. No one else in the family is interested. In colonial times, and I believe through the 19th C, a mince pie was primarily meat, with fruit and spices.
My mother and grandmother canned both meat in gravy and mincemeat, and made mincemeat pie a few times when I was a kid. I suspect my parents weren't big fans as the practice stopped after my grandmothers passed (or possibly, when the USDA started recommending against water-bath canning low-acid/low-sugar food like meat). I'm not sure how Scandinavian mincemeat is but a lot of my mother's food history were actually English dishes prepared by her ancestors when they were household help in Knox County (Galesburg), IL, and adopted as special occasion meals.
Post a Comment